The Meaning of 'Fakemas'

I know this post is coming quite a while past the holidays.... but, that's kind of the point.

Being a military family, we don't always have the opportunity to spend holidays with our respective families. Everyone has their own timetable and schedule. Add in the Army (and deployments, PCS moves, etc), and you've got way more pressure on top of the normal Christmas chaos.

To counter this, my family has started a new tradition. We love our new tradition, because there's no set date to complete it. No specific time everyone must be together. We make our own rules, and we like it.

We're rebels around here!

See, we even create our own 'Fakemas' cards (and since we're mostly girls around here, Fakemas cards include a sexy model on the cover)!

So, what is the meaning of Fakemas? It means we can have Christmas whenever we want, because what's important is that we're together. It means we create memories together, we laugh together, and sometimes even cry together. It doesn't even matter if we're in the same state, we can have Fakemas via Skype or phone call. We can meet in Las Vegas, or back home in July.

I know this sounds silly and a little ridiculous, but it's part of who we are. I love spending time with my sisters, whenever we can get it, not just because it's Christmas. As we grow older, get married, and move on with our own lives... it's harder to visit at the same time, year after year, on a specific day.

So we improvise.

This year, we were scattered as per the usual. But it didn't matter. We still had the love and laughter, just on a different day and in a different way. Instead of presents from 'Santa', we had presents from 'Sant'...

Say what??! I guess the Fakemas elves were sleepy when addressing packages, hahaha!

Of course, we were opening our gifts several weeks after much of the world celebrated Christmas, Chanukah, etc. But who really cares?

Not us!

Instead, we enjoyed an excellent dinner at The Melting Pot , where our waitress surely thought us a wee bit nutty. We opened gifts from the mysterious figure 'Sant', and we recorded video messages to those who couldn't be with us.

And then we passed out from exhaustion, because we crammed weeks of holiday celebrations into a few hours. Totally worth it. We even managed breakfast together before the party had to end.

The moral of this story? Enjoy your loved ones when you can, while you can. Don't get so caught up in the way you think it 'should' be. Instead, make the most of what it is. 

Merry Fakemas, my friends! I hope you cherish every second, and make the most of every opportunity.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

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